This disclosure generally relates to interactive voice response (IVR) systems, and specifically to an automatic language selection for IVR systems.
An IVR system includes one or more computers and telephony equipment that together automate the process of receiving incoming phone calls and interacting with human callers. Businesses commonly handle phone calls from customers using IVR systems because they reduce the burden on the businesses to hire human operators to handle routine transactions. During a call, an IVR system provides a menu of options to a caller and receives information from the caller, such as by using voice recognition or other forms of input such as input from the caller's phone keypad (e.g., DMTF tones) or from the caller's web browser (e.g., an embedded link to call an IVR system). The IVR system responds to a caller's inputs with either prerecorded or dynamically generated audio. The menu of options provided by an IVR system is often nested in a menu tree, which a caller may traverse to access the functionality of the IVR system. Multi-lingual IVR systems provide menu tree options in several languages to accommodate a caller's preferred language, if available. Conventionally, a caller selects a preferred language at or near the beginning of the call, after which the multi-lingual IVR system provides menu tree options for the caller using the preferred language. However, forcing a caller to select a preferred language every time (regardless of the caller's prior language selection) can be burdensome, especially if the caller uses the IVR system often.
The figures depict various example embodiments of the present disclosure for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following discussion that other example embodiments based on alternative structures and methods may be implemented without departing from the principles of the disclosure.